The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
Efforts to boost state’s place in wind power industry grow
HARTFORD — When Connecticut officials request proposals next month for up to 2,000 megawatts of wind power, it will make the state more of a force in the renewable energy marketplace, an industry executive said Tuesday.
Matthew Morrisey, head of New England markets for Danish wind power giant Orsted, said Connecticut is “truly becoming a bestinclass state” as it seeks to boost the amount of renewable energy and capture the job growth that is expected to accompany the development of wind farms off the coast
of southern New England. Morrisey made his remarks during a wind power forum at the Hartford office of the McCarter & English law firm.
Orsted is already committed to producing 200 megawatts of electricity for Connecticut that will come from a wind farm to be built in federal waters about halfway between Montauk, N.Y., and Martha’s Vineyard.
“These are big and complicated projects, but we can’t screw this up,” Morrisey said. “The momentum
is clearly behind offshore wind at this point.”
It’s not just momentum that is building behind wind power projects, most of which are being developed off the East Coast of the United States between North Carolina and Massachusetts. Over $1 billion was invested in wind power projects in the fourth quarter of last year alone, said Liz Burdock, chief executive officer and president for the Business Network for Offshore Wind, a nonprofit on the development of the industry in the United State and advancement of its supply chain.
The 200 megawatts Orst
ed has committed to providing for Connecticut from its Revolution Wind project is expected to create 1,400 jobs in Connecticut, according to Marissa Gillet, chairwoman of the state’s Public Utilities Regulatory Authority. Turbines that will be used to produced the power will be assembled at New London’s State Pier before being towed out the site of the wind farm.
“That’s probably a conservative estimate,” Gillet said of the number of jobs that would be created.
But before New London’s State Pier can become a staging area for assembly of the wind power turbine, it
will have to undergo a $93 million upgrade. Work on the upgrades to the pier are expected to start next year, said David Kooris, deputy commissioner of the Connecticut Department of Economic and Community Development.
“At the end of the day, we get a port that gets the kind of upgrade we never would have been able to realize otherwise,” Kooris said.
Ultimately, he said the state’s longterm goal is to convince the European companies that manufacture the components that the turbines are made of to set up manufacturing in Connecticut.